Tag: home care

New South Carolina representative Nancy Mace was sworn into office this past month. When new legislators are sworn in, it is important that we educate them about the importance of home health care and how it has enabled thousands of South Carolinians to stay at home with their loved ones. This is especially true for Rep. Mace- Since she will be serving on the House Medical Committee, which oversees regulatory issues for the home care industry, it will be important for us to educate her on the challenges our relatively new offices are facing.

Rep. Nancy Mace recently won the special election for House District 99 in Charleston and Berkeley counties and is the first woman to ever win this seat. As a former business owner of a small public relations technology start-up, she understands the grit and determination needed to get a business off the ground. We are hopeful that her business experience and committee membership will spur her to become a legislative champion for our issues.

Legislative meetings are most effective with real life stories from constituents. If you are interested in joining me to meet Rep. Mace and tell her about what home care means to you and your clients, let me know!

On November 21, the House Health Committee met and unanimously voted to approve HB 1829. HB 1829 allows individuals to be presumed eligible for home health care. This practice is currently allowed for nursing homes but is not extended to home care. Because of this, Pennsylvanians often go without the help they need or are unnecessarily placed in a nursing home. The legislation approved included two amendments, which changes the name “presumptive eligibility” to “deemed eligibility”. It also extends this process to allow adult day centers to do presumptive eligibility as well. We are very pleased with this outcome. Next the bill will go to the House Appropriations Committee. The Government Affairs Office (GAO) is working to set up meetings with Appropriations Committee members to ask them to support this legislation.

On November 7, voters elected nomineePhil Murphy to serve as the state’s 56th Governor starting this January through 2022. Governor-elect Murphy chose Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver to serve as Lieutenant Governor. Assemblywoman Oliver served as Speaker of the Assembly for four years. All 120 of the legislative seats were also up for election. The democrats increased their majorities in both houses where they will control the Senate 25-15, and the Assembly 52-28. BAYADA is looking forward to the new administration to support home health care and help us deal with the many challenges of managed Medicaid, access to care, and increasing wages for our field staff through higher reimbursement under Medicaid and waiver programs.

Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Acting Secretary Teresa Miller was called to testify recently at the US Senate Committee on Finance during the Graham-Cassidy bill proposal. This proposed legislation would have a traumatic impact to the home care industry. Not only would it have limited health care coverage for millions of Americans it would have also block granted Medicaid which would limit Pennsylvanians access to home care services.

Because of our advocacy efforts and the advocacy efforts of others, the bill was removed from consideration.

There have been many action alerts this past quarter each one more important than the last. Thank you for taking the time to be a heart for home care and taking action!

Recently, Samantha Koehler, policy aide to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging for ranking member U.S. Senator Bob Casey, and Vicki Hoak, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Homecare Association, spent the day in Philadelphia with BAYADA Home Health Care. During her time with us, Samantha spent time learning about the inner workings of our service office and went on two home visits, one to an assistive care state programs client and another to a hospice client.

During Samantha’s visit, we discussed the most recent issues to impact home care in Pennsylvania including the institutional bias that still exists, the challenges with the recent proposal to block grant or institute per-capita caps to Medicaid, and the harmful proposed home health groupings rule.

Samantha loved getting to spend some time with Ms. Lenora E. and her aide Kimyatta J. Ms. E has been a BAYADA client for over a year and gets nine hours of care a day. She is served by the Philadelphia Corporation of Aging (PCA) office. She also met Florence G., a 101-year-old heart patient who can remain at home with her daughter because of the care we deliver. She loves her Clinical Manager Faith Brown almost as much as she loves her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. Grace is served out of the Pennsylvania Media Hospice (PMH) office.

Ten months into her new job Secretary of Health & Human Services, Dr. Mandy Cohen has been working to move her Medicaid Transformation plan forward. She hired an implementation guru from Missouri, Jay Ludlam as the Assistant Secretary for Medicaid Transformation to lead the process. Medicaid’s hope is to address the physical and behavioral health of North Carolinians. The goal is to improve overall health by creating an innovative and well-coordinated Managed Care environment that addressed the whole-person. The program design calls for three state-wide commercial plans and up to twelve provider-led entities (PLE) as regional plans. The department’s aggressive timeline will release request for proposals (RFP) in early 2018, with a targeted transition in 2019, pending CMS approval. BAYADA has been invited to participate in stakeholder discussions as Medicaid develops their Pre-paid Health Plan (PHP) model. Our goal, related to home care, is to ensure level of services and provider adequacy remains central in the program design and waiver application. GAO has involved technical experts from across our various practices to ensure our feedback is sound and supports BAYADA’s overall mission.